Autobiography of Red and ‘Eyes Shut’: Olly Alexander as a sad young man
‘He was seated at the kitchen table
with his camera in front of his face adjusting the focus. He did not answer.
He had recently relinquished speech.’
– Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
‘I am drawing pictures
I’m evading
I will not use them, I will not use them’
– Years & Years, Eyes Shut
The first time I heard ‘Eyes Shut’ I thought of Geryon. Geryon is a red-winged monster from Greek mythology, recast firstly as a sensitive teenage boy then as a complex queer man in Anne Carson’s epic poems ‘Autobiography of Red’ and ‘Red Doc’. In the first poem (which is really a collection of poems, or prose, or fragments) Geryon becomes captivated by photography and falls in love with another teenage boy, Herakles, whom he idolises, but who will eventually leave him hopeless in the depths of infatuation. Herakles returns towards the end of the poem, and remains Geryon’s companion during the second poem ‘Red Doc>’, in which he is renamed Sad But Great. The second poem is set when Geryon is older and more reflective, but still unable to relate to the world around him and the people in it. His alienation throughout both works is symbolised by his enormous red wings, which he straps to his back and hides with clothing, only unfurling them when he is alone.
(The poems are difficult to describe and to quantify – they’re stunning and revealing and human but it’s hard to pin down exactly why. I’m not even sure I fully understand them even though I’ve read them both several times.)
Like Geryon, the narrator of ‘Eyes Shut’ (and so, Olly Alexander) struggles to relate to those close to him, longs for physical and romantic relationships despite being unable to sustain them, and uses artistic creation as a way to keep going through periods of emotional upheaval and numbness. There’s a whole lot more comparisons that could be made between the character of Geryon and the version of Olly Alexander that is presented more widely in his lyrics – both derive their own self-worth from their relationships with romantic partners, for instance. I wasn’t surprised to find that Olly is a fan of Anne Carson and has posted a section of Autobiography of Red on Twitter.
There are two recordings of ‘Eyes Shut’ – an earlier, more lo-fi synth version on the b-side of ‘Real’, and the reworked ballad that appears on ‘Communion’. Maybe it’s a little too tidy to think this, but the two versions of Olly Alexander present on the two versions of ‘Eyes Shut’ seem to mirror the two version of Geryon in Anne Carson’s work: the first is younger, naïve maybe; the second is older and more reflective. In the first version, the almost stream-of-consciousness style of the lyrics and delivery feels like Olly is making it up as he goes along; suggests that he is living this now, is present in these feelings. Compare the way he sings ‘All I really want is for you to understand that I’m a mess’ in the first version to the more condensed, considered ‘All I really want is to start again’ in the second version. He’s living it in the first version, and in the second he’s assessed it, come to terms with it (almost).
Geryon and (the public presentation of) Olly Alexander both align with what Richard Dyer identifies as ‘the homosexual as a sad young man’, a pop cultural stereotype identified in his book ‘The Culture of Queers’. According to Dyer, the sad young man is typically depicted as suffering, feminised and ‘hyper-emotional’, and is evident in works such as James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room, Shelagh Delaney’s stage play A Taste of Honey, and the public star images of James Dean and Montgomery Clift. According to Dyer, the appeal of the sad young man also lies in the way that ‘their youth is often part of their beauty… this attractiveness makes them figures for both identification (the better self often seen by fans in their chosen stars) and desire. In other words, as much as the image may be about others, it is available to be taken as being about oneself, and as much as it is about a terrible, miserable way of being it also sets it up as an erotically desirable one’.
I’m the first to admit that sad young gay men populate the majority of the pop culture that I love the most – Xavier Dolan films, James Baldwin novels, contemporary retellings of the romance between Achilles and Patroclus, anything at all with Ben Whishaw in it – which, according to Richard Dyer’s analysis, is a typical combination of feelings of desire and empathy. But this kind of man (boy, really) is increasingly super present at the forefront of pop culture in general.
‘Sensitive boys’ (and there’s a LOT wrong with that phrase) and alternative masculinity have always had a place in pop music, especially that targeted towards young women and gay men – from indie bands like The Smiths and Suede to the ‘nice boys’ in boybands from the 1960s to the present day.
To me, the difference between these men and the latest crop of ‘sensitive’ (more often than not, queer) male pop stars, including Olly Alexander, seems to be the tension between public and private presentations of self. Morrissey poured his heart out in his lyrics but was purposefully enigmatic in interviews during his time in The Smiths, for example. In sharp contrast, Australian queer pop star Troye Sivan (who I completely adore, unsurprisingly) is pretty up front about how his melancholy lyrics relate to his real life:
Moving away from the mainstream (and thousands upon thousands of retweets), Ezra Furman – another one of my absolute favourites – accompanied his most recent record ‘Perpetual Motion People’ with a personal essay about his experiences of suicidal ideation, and how coming to terms with his bisexuality and gender fluidity helped him to feel more free and comfortable in himself. The essay was printed on the reverse side of the lyrics to the record, physically entwining his personal lived experience with the ways it was interpreted lyrically.
Olly Alexander recently compiled an annotated playlist of songs to cry to for Dazed online, and in an interview with Popjustice stated that ‘I do cry quite a lot. I haven’t lately. But I am quite sensitive.’
Talking about the writing of ‘Eyes Shut’ in an interview on YouTube, Olly commented ‘I wrote it about two years ago. I was really depressed, and it is a sort of personal torch song.’ It could be seen as a subversion of the torch song form – the focus flipped from the wanted (the object of desire, the person for whom one carries a torch) to the one who wants (the torch singer). Or even from the wanted to the one who can’t want, because of numbness and depression and overwhelming emotions. In the song, Olly is a sensitive young man looking for a subject, needing someone or something to relate to, to justify his existence. Like Geryon after his abandonment by Herakles, he is in the midst of ‘a numb time, caught between the tongue and the taste’.
